


Brisking About the Life

by innie



Category: Which Witch? - Eva Ibbotson
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 05:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16655401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Begonias everywhere.  Plus a hot French chef, a pair of adoptive grandparents, some unexpected skills, and Rover living his best life.





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



> Prinzenhasserin rocked the beta! Thanks, Prinz! (The French is entirely my fault and my best guesses. Most of it has translations you can see if you put your mouse over the italicized text.)
> 
> And thanks to the recipient, Deepdarkwaters, for introducing me to this fantastic book!
> 
> Title from [Christopher Smart's "Jubilate Agno, Fragment B, [For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry],"](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/jubilate-agno-fragment-b-i-will-consider-my-cat-jeoffry) long a favorite poem.

The small village in France known as Sacdot had only one claim to fame, and that was that Le Merveilleux (the most celebrated chef in the world) had been born and raised there. Le Merveilleux was a chef whose renown spread first through Sacdot, where his young hands combined available ingredients in the most delectable ways, then through the entire region, and from there to the capital where eating good things was a way of life and a religion unto itself. 

Le Merveilleux accepted the honour of cooking for a senior minister, and threw himself, heart and soul, into preparations for the banquet the minister was hosting as a means of finding himself a wife of beauty, youth, wealth, and taste. Long a proponent of using local ingredients, for this magnificent occasion he decided to go back to his roots as a Sacdot boy. Only the mushrooms Le Merveilleux remembered sprouting in the Sacdot woods were fit to accompany the veal to be prepared from the calf he had seen milk-fed from birth. Only Sacdot herbs were worthy of flavouring his sauces. The minister, well pleased with the exacting nature of Le Merveilleux's preparations, never grumbled at the strain put on his purse, for Le Merveilleux had a way with these things and no one else in all of Paris — the center of the civilised universe, _naturellement_ — had such a genius in their kitchens.

The guests at the banquet murmured happily that they had never tasted such marvels. Pink lips were patted with serviettes, and the minister rubbed his hands together with glee; the wine (from Sacdot grapes, of course) and food made faces shine with joy. The veal scaloppine with mushroom marsala sauce was an undoubted triumph: so tender, so toothsome, so robustly flavoured, so . . . poisonous. Every last guest — and any person who'd sneaked a mouthful, which was every servant — dropped dead and Le Merveilleux was left standing alone, bewildered, the rich flavour of the marsala sauce he'd tasted not more than an hour ago still on his tongue.

*

"Le Merveilleux," pronounced Madame la Présidente at his trial (the Trial of the Century, according to the French newspapers, the third so named and the first with a body count), "we find you to be guilty and not guilty. We do not say innocent. Nobody who killed so many in one fell swoop can be called innocent. But we recognise that you should not bear the burden of guilt for not realising that every atom of Sacdot was steeped in poison. Clearer signs for magical villages must be posted," Madame la Présidente continued, climbing up on her particular hobbyhorse. She stayed astride it for some time while Le Merveilleux chewed his poisonous fingernails nervously.

Hours later, he was finally sentenced: he was going to pay his penance by serving for a year as the personal chef of Gallia, the oldest witch in all of France and therefore something of a national treasure. No poison could harm her, no weapon could kill her, and no one (including herself) had bothered with her domestic arrangements in decades. Le Merveilleux heard all of this and tried to stay hopeful. Surely a witch of such age and renown would appreciate haute cuisine?

He had no way of knowing until he arrived at Gallia's filthy castle, on a wagon hauling his trove of copper and iron cookware, a bag of his most prized ingredients on his lap, that the witch's established practise was to blend all the courses of a given meal together in an industrial-sized Magimix (just until the mixture was nicely lumpy) and then guzzle it down. That part of her ritual took about twenty minutes and seemed to give her no pleasure at all. What Gallia actually enjoyed was picking bits of the slurry out of her few remaining teeth — clumped together in threes throughout the yawning cavern of her mouth — and sucking all of the flavour out of those morsels in order to make oracular declarations about people, places, or objects related (tangentially or directly) to these second-time-around chunks; this could take her days.

The first time Le Merveilleux saw what became of one of his exquisite meals, beautifully plated and timed to perfection so that each course would be at its optimal temperature as the previous one was finished, his knees gave way. Watching Gallia pick at her teeth with a hardy yew twig broke him utterly.

*

"Uggghhhhhrrrr," Gallia said one particular day after guzzling down the slurry she'd made of Le Merveilleux's famed beef stroganoff with mustard and crisp potato straws. As the year of his penance had dragged by, he'd long since given up trying to categorise her digestive sounds as appreciative or repulsed.

"Repeating on me, this is," she said, and belched again. She picked at her teeth with the formidably sharp twig, brightening when she tugged a particularly chunky morsel off the stick; it happened to be the last of his Sacdot mushrooms. "Ooh, prophecy coming," she said.

"What was that, madame?" Le Merveilleux said, polite to the last. "What prophecy?" He had not yet seen her prophesy (advanced age meant they came to her only once in a blue moon, instead of fortnightly, as they'd done in her youth), just gulp down those small stuck bits.

"From the food, of course," Gallia said, for she strove to be friendly and truly had no idea how deeply her dietary habits wounded the master chef. She closed her eyes and let the words spill forth. "Le Merveilleux necessary there," she bellowed and fixed him with one gimlet eye, making him shiver, "magic behind," she howled, "Todcas!" she shrieked. Her second eye opened, an unearthly light shining from the pair of them. "TODCAS!" she screamed again, and then fell abruptly asleep.

Le Merveilleux felt the words in his bones — prophecies were nothing to mess with — and had heard enough to know that he had some research to do. Gallia didn't keep anything so formal as a library, but she had a few almanacs lying around the castle and he consulted one that covered all of Europe and found a listing for Todcaster in the far north of England, the only place that could conceivably be the "Todcas" of her pronouncement. It was apparently a requirement that he should be there, and his time in Gallia's employ was drawing to a close in any case. He sighed, thinking of all of the wretched English foods he would have to try to make, then brightened a bit as he thought how unlikely it would be to find a second employer who treated food as cavalierly as Gallia did. He began to pack with a slightly lighter heart.

Because he had never seen her prophesy before, he had no clue that Gallia's oracular utterances depended on the provenance of his ingredients; in saying her last meal was repeating on her — coming back up instead of staying down — she'd actually given him a vital clue that it was not "Todcas" that needed him, but "Sacdot," his birthplace, which was being overrun by gimcrack witches and wizards incapable of true, sustained magic (white or black), who were wretchedly eager to cash in on the fame he'd brought the place by offering "genuine Sacdot swine" as familiars to those who wanted a magic companion and truffle hunter in one. They were the ones whose magic lagged far behind his, to make sense of Gallia's cryptic bellows.

Off to Todcaster he went.


	2. CHAPTER ONE

When dawn broke over Darkington Hall, all of its residents were still occupying their beds, in varying degrees of happiness and wakefulness. Lester was fast asleep, dreaming of the swords he'd once swallowed; he smacked his lips and smiled into his pillow. Terence was snuffling a little in his sleep, one small hand tucked securely in the luxurious technicolour fur of the Wizard Watcher's chest as the creature dozed mostly upright next to the boy's bed (the dark wizard had not thought particularly far ahead in terms of giving it a shape conducive to a good night's rest, as its purpose was, after all, to watch wakefully for a wizard). Rover was wound around the roots of the brightest begonia Belladonna had accidentally created when she hadn't had a tight enough lid on her happiness. That begonia sat on the kitchen sill so that Rover, if he wished it, could look down on the Kraken, slumbering in his beloved soup tureen and making the bubbling sounds he produced instead of snores. It was not so much those ersatz snores that kept Noah Leadbetter awake (his bedroom was just off the kitchen) but rather his worry about his employer and said employer's bride. Good Mr. Leadbetter was a worrier by nature, but never got much satisfaction out of it, for his worry was genuine, not ginned up, and he had good reason for it.

Not that anyone other than a Darkington denizen, seeing the picture Arriman the Awful and Belladonna the Beloved made, tucked up together in their marital bed, would have agreed. "They are the very picture of conjugal harmony!" said observer, if he were given to protest, might have said. "Dunno what yer on about, mate," another might have opined. But they did not have Mr. Leadbetter's watchful eyes or affectionate heart.

*

"My treasure," Arriman said to Belladonna as they sat down to a meal she had prepared of beans on toast with fried mushrooms and lashings of sauce, "you are looking particularly exquisite this morning."

As a matter of fact, though no other woman would have seemed beautified by wrestling with the outdated appliances in the Darkington kitchen, Belladonna was; her cheeks were pink from exertion and her blue eyes glowed with happiness that she was able to provide something nourishing and delicious for her family, all gathered around the table and smiling up at her. Even the Kraken, who persisted in swinging from Arriman's tufty ears by two of his little legs and gleefully shouting "Whee, Daddy!" at the crest of each parabola he described in the air, perked up still further at the sight of breakfast borne by Belladonna (rounded out with kippers for the Kraken and some really choice grass for Rover).

Mr. Leadbetter sighed at the evident affection in the words and the way one of Belladonna's begonias fluttered shyly against the wizard's dark cheek in return. He wished he could believe himself mistaken about the danger he saw looming ahead.

"Noah," said Lester, "no more huffing and puffing. You and me, we'll talk after we've tucked in." His single eye clapped meaningfully on the newlyweds and then back to Mr. Leadbetter.

After breakfast, Arriman and Belladonna tutored Terence with Rover and the Wizard Watcher supervising and the Kraken making a pest of himself in a way that was only going to further endear him to the dark wizard, and so Lester and Noah had the kitchen to themselves. "I know what you're gonna say —" Lester began, starting to clear the dishes.

Despite this assurance, Mr. Leadbetter was about to expound on the trouble he was seeing when a knock came at the kitchen door. It was, to Mr. Leadbetter's ear, a particularly musical knock, and a shiver made its way up his tail, a completely novel sensation.

Lester shuffled over to answer it, and on the other side was Le Merveilleux, come to meet his destiny.

*

In the noxious laboratory of Darkington Hall, Terence was working through some basic physics problems (how many electric eels were needed to generate the power for a simple storm that would turn knickers on a drying line inside-out twice over, and so on). Arriman was correcting his maths as he went and Belladonna was letting the Kraken's twisty little legs play in her tumbled hair. The Kraken was content to burrow into the warm, fragrant mass at first, then decided the time was ripe to buckle down and do what he'd wanted to do since he first called Belladonna "mummy." 

While the Kraken swung himself nimbly from lock to lock, and Terence casually mastered algebra, physics, and various branches of higher learning, Belladonna took the opportunity to speak softly with her husband, who was looking at her besottedly and contemplating whether her eyelids could truly be as kissable as they looked.

"Arry, darling," she said, winding one slender arm confidingly around his waist and making him feel he had done not nearly enough to deserve this wonderful woman.

"Speak, angel," he murmured, so moved that he began composing poetry on the spot. "My ear is open like a greedy shark, / To catch the tunings of a voice divine." Yes, that was rather good, really set down how he felt.

Belladonna smiled, projecting her joy deep into his eyes before an unfortunate tug at her hair drew her head sharply back. Straightening out and giving the Kraken a fond pat, she continued. "I was wondering when I would meet your parents."

"What?" Arriman, Loather of Light, asked dreamily. He was considering various epithets for the particular shade of Belladonna's marvellous eyes when her words finally came clear. "My parents? Mark and Susan Canker?"

Rapturously, Belladonna clasped him all the more tightly. "Mark! Susan! Perfection!" A pair of turtledoves alighted on the windowsill and began cooing. "Would they like to live here, with us, do you think?"

Arriman had not seen his parents in decades, since he had struck out on his own to do his dark magic, but recognised that they had done all they could to give him a good start. He remembered being very fond of the bat frieze his mum had painted for him. "Let us start with having them round for lunch, my blossom."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, the lines Arriman composes should rightly be attributed to John Keats. Points for trying, right?


	3. CHAPTER TWO

Mr. Leadbetter retained just enough professional dignity to address a proper invitation to tea to the Cankers (to appear in their mailbox in a puff of smoke no one would actually see) before allowing himself to swoon a little at the thought of the hot French chef labouring away in the kitchen . . . the kitchen next to which he slept. He could hear Le Merveilleux grunting gallicly at the pots bubbling under his direction and resolved to do whatever he could to make the man feel welcome. Polishing the silverware was probably a good start.

Le Merveilleux was indeed very busy, preparing a feast that would allow him to stay at this place where magic fairly oozed out of every crack, where his own magic was — according to prophecy — necessary. The man with two eyes and very kind smile appeared in the doorway, waving shyly but keeping out of his way, which Le Merveilleux found himself disappointed by; spoken English was still by and large a mystery to him, though he'd invested in a good phrasebook, but he thought he might have managed a basic conversation even while making sure that his vichysoisse, poulet rôti, and gratin de chou-fleur (non-poisonous versions, to accommodate dietary restrictions) were coming along nicely.

"Allo," he tried, then doubted himself when the word was enough to make the other man blush deeply.

"Hullo," said Noah Leadbetter, unaware of how the rose streaking his faintly freckled skin was affecting Le Merveilleux. "Don't mind me, I'll just be over here." In his head, Mr. Leadbetter fought a fierce battle regarding how he ought best to position himself. Turn his back on the chef and he'd be giving the man a good look at his miserable tail, which was behaving as if he'd stuck it in a socket. But facing him was no good either, as that wonderful face was sure to be a distraction, and Arriman and Belladonna had not got any wedding china — not a single guest had thought to check the registry he'd made at Turnbull and Buttle — and were down to just enough crockery and cutlery for the household. He compromised by standing in profile, which, unbeknownst to him, gave Le Merveilleux a rather enticing picture of all of his shy charms, from the distracting swaying of his auburn cowlick to the pert tip of his freckled nose, from the short tail that pointed directly at the pleasing firmness of his bottom to his pretty ankles.

Vichysoisse had always been, in Le Merveilleux's kitchen, a cold soup, but he found himself turning up the flame nonetheless.

*

Belladonna had never had much use for mirrors (other than the one that she'd employed, during their unusual courtship, to gaze longingly upon Arriman about his daily tasks) and so had no idea of the picture she made when she entered the kitchen. " _Mon dieu!_ " gasped Le Merveilleux, stunned by the plait in her luxurious hair, as deftly formed and symmetrical as his best eight-stranded plaited loaf. Mr. Leadbetter's heart, which began to fall at the startled delight Le Merveilleux displayed at the mere sight of Belladonna the Beautiful, was abruptly steadied by being gobsmacked by what happened next.

" _C'est bonne, n'est-ce pas? Je l'ai fait tout seul!_ " chirped the Kraken. It perhaps ought not to have been a surprise that the Kraken, dexterous enough to plait Belladonna's exuberant curls, could speak so fluently; he was, after all, a dread and dangerous monster, old as the earth itself, and had heard every human tongue (he particularly enjoyed French, which he'd heard from the expeditions of Jacques Cousteau). His currently being conveniently pocket-sized did not diminish his vast intelligence, even if none of the Darkington denizens had ever heard him speak more than a word or two at a time.

" _Oui, c'est magnifique — vous devez m'apprendre, gentil monsieur,_ " replied Le Merveilleux, who could sense a more elemental magic than he'd ever before encountered emanating from this creature that looked like a baby octopus that had swallowed an umbrella and been wrestled into a nappy. Somehow the wide blue eyes added to the aura of danger, so he obeyed his instinct and kept his references to the creature formal and respectful. " _J'adorerais vous voir faire un pain._ "

Mr. Leadbetter's schoolboy French was just good enough to let his brain translate automatically while the rest of his anatomy reacted in less helpful ways. His tail had swivelled sharply to point upright, the sound of Le Merveilleux's voice caressing the syllables of his native tongue as effective as a live wire. Mr. Leadbetter's throat felt stuck, unable to unlock enough for him to speak, to translate for Belladonna, whose lovely face wore a sorrowfully puzzled expression.

" _Pardon, madame_ ," Le Merveilleux began, then switched to halting, musical English that made Mr. Leadbetter's skin flush anew. "Your . . . hairs is wonderful, the plait," Le Merveilleux stated, gesturing with enough abandon that his chef's jacket lifted enough that Mr. Leadbetter caught a glimpse of his bellybutton, and his tail went stiff as a poker as it recognised its ideal home. "Is _le p'tit monsieur_ 's doing, no? May he . . . accompany me in making the foods?"

Belladonna was already smiling her agreement and Noah Leadbetter, the flush on his face now strong enough that he was shining like the dawn, felt his unreasonable jealousy subside as he noted that he was the one Le Merveilleux kept looking at though he was talking to Belladonna and discussing the Kraken. "Of course he may, if he chooses?" she answered. It was an elegant solution to a problem Belladonna had been considering in the weeks since her marriage; the Kraken was growing into his powers at quite a rapid clip, and as such was making it clear he was unwilling to go down for his post-breakfast (and post-lunch) naps. Belladonna found herself unable to devote as much time to Terence's tutelage as she wanted, as the Kraken (still a baby in terms of his size and bodily needs) required constant attention. "Would you like that?" she asked him, stroking a hand over the nearest scaly leg and making him giggle because the touch tickled.

" _Oui!_ " trumpeted the Kraken, and swung himself up on the counter.

At that interesting moment, Arriman entered the kitchen, deep in conversation with Terence and the Wizard Watcher about the last problem Belladonna had set Terence at his lesson (working out how to keep blood types separate when creating gaping wounds). Terence's fingers found the Wizard Watcher's comforting sunset fur and the Wizard Watcher's tail curled around the boy's thin ankle. Arriman strode forward, toward the handsome stranger giving his wife a spectacular smile, and demanded, "Who the deuce are you?"

Belladonna's smile vanished in an instant. "Arry! Didn't you engage a chef for us?"

Arriman, for a moment, wished he had, as that would mean that Belladonna would have more hours to spend with him instead of doing thrice-daily battle in the kitchen while he was supposed to be writing his book but really was just composing poetry about his wife. But he certainly would never have engaged a man so aesthetically pleasing. "No. Who are you, interloper?"

Such a word was much beyond Le Merveilleux's English vocabulary, but he recognised the tone of an aggrieved husband. " _Mille pardons!_ " he said smoothly, heartened by the way Mr. Leadbetter inched a little closer, visibly allying himself with him. "I am known as Le Merveilleux, and I am here to cook for you because of a prophecy."

"Oooh," said Lester, who'd just come through the door, packages weighing down his arms so far that his chin just cleared the top box. "Glad I got 'ere in time for this."

Noah Leadbetter scrambled to divest the ogre of his burdens, noting that the heavy boxes bore the Turnbull and Buttle logo. He grinned at his friend, which made Le Merveilleux's hand clench around his ladle. "Catch me up, Noah," Lester said.

"My last position was with a great witch," Le Merveilleux said, being more than fair though he clutched the ladle ever more tightly, "who could make prophecy. She said I was . . . necessary at Todcas, and also she said something about — _comment dites-vous_ — 'magic behind.'"

Noah Leadbetter's heart did the somersault his tail wanted to do (but was too short to pull off). If anyone in Todcaster or the environs had a magic behind, it was him, with his tail. He blessed the appendage silently but fervently.

"How marvellous!" Belladonna said, grinning at Lester, who was grinning right back; both of them had picked up immediately on the romantic haze in the air. "Certainly you are engaged." She clasped her husband's hand and dragged him over to the pot of vichysoisse. "Oh, it smells delicious!"

Arriman, like Terence and the Wizard Watcher, was slower to pick up on the matchmaking, but unlike them would have argued a little — a man had to be master of his own dark castle — if Belladonna had not laid her great golden head on his shoulder and brought his hand to her lips. "Very well," he said, trying for menace but not quite getting there.

"Then dinner is served," Le Merveilleux said with a bow, striking while the iron was hot though it was actually only eleven in the morning.

*

Terence volunteered to wash the new everyday china Lester had brought from the department store, and Arriman, after much prompting, said he would dry. Lester and the Wizard Watcher sat at the table to get out of the way, Belladonna and the Kraken helped Le Merveilleux put the finishing touches on the meal, and Mr. Leadbetter dithered between wanting to watch everything the chef did and wanting to have a bosom-friends heart-to-heart with Lester, who could be counted on to sympathise with his hypothesis that Le Merveilleux was a man in a million.

The meal was wonderful — Terence saved a bit of leek from his vichysoisse for Rover — and Le Merveilleux sat next to Mr. Leadbetter on the backless bench that more readily accommodated his tail than a kitchen chair would, letting their hands brush with increasing regularity. Lester might have had only one eye, but it was a good one, and though he was a little put out by his luck at having to witness two couples falling madly in love in such a short timespan, at least, he consoled himself, this one would be much less embarrassing than the other; not having a common tongue meant that neither Le Merveilleux nor Noah was likely to spout the kind of godawful verse that Arriman liked to recite for Belladonna — and in his normal voice, too, not even in a decently shamed whisper.

When only the bones of the roast chicken were left of the meal — Lester and Terence, who'd been planning a variation on a soapbox derby, silently bemoaned the loss of the bones when Le Merveilleux swept them into his copper stock-pot — Belladonna took her husband, Terence, and the Wizard Watcher off for afternoon lessons, which were usually more practical than theoretical. Lester eyed the Kraken, who was peering interestedly into the stock-pot, warily. He knew what Noah wanted, and it wasn't to play nursemaid to a creature from the unfathomable deeps. He was just going to say something to that effect when the Kraken himself turned around, caught his eye, and said something in French to Le Merveilleux. Lester watched as the man turned magenta as the Wizard Watcher's underbelly, and the Kraken, busily washing dishes with six of his legs, pointed the seventh at Noah and the eighth at Noah's bedroom, just off the kitchen. Lester was gratified to see that when Le Merveilleux, cheeks still flaming, reached out a hand to Noah, Noah reached back and tangled their fingers together.

"C'mon, then," Lester said to the Kraken and Rover. "Goodness knows what we'd be hearing if we stuck around here. Let's go to the cinema — there's a good ghoul flick showing and I'll get us a couple of ice creams." They were not quite fast enough to avoid hearing some fervent whispers and more fervent kissing, but at least they missed the moments (multiple) when Le Merveilleux turned Mr. Leadbetter quite inside out (figuratively speaking) and Noah Leadbetter made his man feel quite _bouleversé_.


	4. CHAPTER THREE

Arriman, Great Wizard of the North, shuffled sleepily into the kitchen in the morning, fully expecting a hot breakfast that would melt in his mouth as yesterday's suspiciously early dinner had — a perfectly reasonable expectation when one has, as he had, engaged a master chef. That he did not find such a meal was his first unpleasant surprise of the day. (To be fair, he'd started the day with one that was entirely pleasant: Belladonna looked even lovelier than usual when she was wearing his blood-purple pajamas that clashed so terribly with the gold-and-black number he was sporting.) The second unpleasant surprise was finding another unfairly handsome stranger seated at his kitchen table like he had every right.

Scowling, Arriman made his way to the cupboard to find a bowl and a box of cornflakes. The man sitting on the backless bench smiled cheerily at him and gestured to the jug of milk already on the table. Arriman's nostrils flared at this presumption, but he was too hungry to eviscerate every Tom, Dick, and Harry who made himself at home at Darkington. The Kraken snored bubblingly, folded in on himself inside his tureen; Arriman felt vastly let down that a creature of unimaginable evil was not enough of a deterrent for the steady stream of interlopers Darkington was experiencing.

In fact, it was none other than Noah Leadbetter at the table, his afternoon, evening, and night in Le Merveilleux's arms acting like a miracle cream, banishing the worried lines into which his face used to settle and restoring his natural glow. His skin was dappled with dear little golden freckles, his auburn hair took on an insouciant curl, and his brown eyes shone like the pebbles over which a brook rushed. "Good morning, sir," he said, eyes twinkling merrily at Arriman over the rim of his coffee cup.

Arriman stood stock-still. "Good . . . morning, Leadbetter. Have you seen that cook we hired?" The Loather of Light was dumbfounded to see his secretary smirk into his coffee. Had Leadbetter's little tail smacked him across the face, Arriman the Awful could not have been more taken aback.

"Mmm, yes," Leadbetter said. "Jean will be up soon enough, I expect. He's got something wonderful planned for lunch, I hear."

"Ah, good," Arriman said vaguely, willing the conversation to end. He shovelled cornflakes into his mouth at an alarming rate, dropped the empty bowl in the sink, and went to find his wife.

*

Belladonna was trying to clean without resorting to magic, but she was so happy to meet her in-laws that the magic kept bubbling up and leaving everything sparkling in its wake. There was one wall that couldn't be seen at all due to the rainbow profusion of flowers blossoming against it. Still singing, Belladonna went down the corridor to Terence's room, where she found him brushing the Wizard Watcher's fur.

Terence, knowing that nothing could possibly make him pleasant to look upon, was determined to do his best to please the Cankers regardless. It was therefore his duty to be polite and neat, and to make sure that Rover was as plumply pink as possible and that the Wizard Watcher's fur, which had all the hues of an autumn dusk, was brushed to a high gloss. 

Belladonna could smell her own homemade shampoo on both Terence's lank hair and the Wizard Watcher's gleaming fur, and she hugged them both. "You darling boy," she whispered into the top of his head, wishing he would see himself as she did, knowing he had no idea how nice he looked when he was happy. "You dearest monster," she said into the very soft orangey fur over the Wizard Watcher's gigantic heart (though he understood anatomy well enough to rend a corporal being limb from limb, Arriman was not particularly knowledgeable about creating one from the ground up and so the Wizard Watcher's proportions were all a little askew).

When Terence showed her how he'd magicked the pocket of his blue button-down shirt to be waterproof, she summoned a bud pearled with a few drops of dew and dropped them in, then tucked the bud behind her ear. No better home for Rover could possibly be devised, and indeed the worm himself looked in fine fettle on this momentous day, the mauve of his bulge particularly pronounced.

*

"Mum, Dad," Arriman said, "welcome to Darkington Hall."

"Thanks, son," Mark Canker said, ushering his wife inside with a hand at the small of her back. "Quite a big place you've got here."

"Lovely garden, too," Susan Canker chimed in. The senior Cankers exchanged looks that said it all: how glad they were to be back in their little boy's life, how pleased they were that he looked so happy.

"That's all due to Belladonna," Arriman said, modestly eliding his own poisonous contributions, even the grandeur of the yew-tree maze, "my wife."

"Oh, love!" Susan and Mark said together, and there was a tangle of limbs as the Cankers tried to embrace witch and wizard, not minding much if they got them together or separately. Lester, waiting respectfully five steps behind, dashed a tear from his eye. It was heartening to see Belladonna, who'd never known her own parents, so readily welcomed by her husband's, and Terence leaned a little closer to the Wizard Watcher's soft and fragrant chest when he saw shining unmeltable snowflakes (proof of Belladonna's joy) dotting the air around the four Cankers. Everybody loved Belladonna, and that was the way things ought to be, as far as he was concerned.

"Come meet the rest of the family," Belladonna said. "This is Terence, and the Wizard Watcher, oh, and Rover, and Lester, and Noah, and — where are the others?"

"The Kraken is setting the table," said Mr. Leadbetter, "and Jean is in the kitchen keeping an eye on his soufflé." He was nearly as nervous as Belladonna, having wondered about his employer's parentage for years, but he maintained a thoroughly professional façade. When he turned to gesture in the direction of the kitchen, his tail peeped perkily at the Cankers, who smiled to see it. Arriman watched as his parents twined hands, and did the same with Belladonna, who turned to him with a gaze so bright he had to kiss her immediately. When he finally lifted his head, everyone was patiently waiting for him to lead the way. Head held high, he did, glad that he'd heeded Lester's advice and not worn the antlers; they might have impressed his parents but they just as well might have put Belladonna's beautiful eyes out.

*

Jean Javert's fame was such that the Cankers knew the name Le Merveilleux, and they were fully aware of the honour of eating one of his non-lethal meals. "Would you mind giving me the recipe for that soufflé?" Mark asked, after finishing his last bite of the ham, leek, and gouda masterpiece on his plate. "Reckon the lads would demolish it."

Jean lifted his head from Noah's ear, into which he'd been whispering just what he wanted to do to his _choupinet_ , and said, " _Mais oui, monsieur. Mon plaisir._ "

"Arry," Belladonna said, "please pass the potatoes."

"I never thought to call him Arry," Susan said, smiling at her daughter-in-law. "You might be the first, Belladonna." There was some justice to her thought; certainly the book on wizards in which she and Mark had found the name hadn't mentioned that the evil Persian sorcerer answered to an endearing nickname in between feats of utter wickedness.

"Even when he was a baby?" Belladonna asked. "You didn't coo over his little toes, his tufty little ears, and just say 'Arry'?"

"Well, he was George for his first few weeks," Mark explained. Lester snuck a peek at his boss to see how he was taking it and was surprised to find him looking interested.

"I don't remember that," said the Loather of Light.

"It really was only a few weeks, love," Mark said. "You made it quite clear that you were a dark wizard right away, we just had to do the research to make sure we'd got it right. There wasn't anything like this in either of our families that we could remember."

"So why 'George'?" Terence asked. He'd grown resigned to his own name — it sounded quite nice when Belladonna and the Wizard Watcher said it — but was curious about others'.

Susan laughed. "When I was small, I had a plush giraffe that I loved more than anything else. I named it George. And Mark had a stuffed hippopotamus that he called George. There wasn't any other name that would do."

"Did you mind, calling him something else then?" Terence asked quietly.

"No, love. He was an Arriman, we just didn't know it at first."

"You might want to pass it on," Mark said casually, digging into the dish of gratin dauphinois. "This little scamp needs a name." He winked at the Kraken, who'd wound one of his legs around Mark's fork.

Arriman opened his mouth to protest giving a creature of unspeakable evil a name as plebeian as George, but Belladonna was already leaning forward to meet the Kraken's eyes. "Would you like to be called George?" she asked, and got a flurry of delighted-sounding clicks and bubblings in response.

" _'Georges'? Vraiment?_ " asked Jean, bemused.

" _Ou 'Le Plus Merveilleux'_ ," said cheeky little George, creature of the darkest deeps.

Jean, already leaning forward to investigate a particular freckle on his Noah's neck, laughed, which made Mr. Leadbetter, ticklish as the Kraken, laugh too. The sound spread like wildfire, and Belladonna, beaming, produced a round of Knickerbocker Glories with toffee and chocolate sauces.

*

Terence was ecstatic, so happy he was having trouble standing still. He pushed his face into the Wizard Watcher's chest and lolled a bit, weak-kneed. Mr. and Mrs. Canker had said they considered themselves his grandparents, and if he liked, he could have tea with them at their little house in Todcaster twice a week. Since he could transport himself without so much as a puff of smoke, they wouldn't have to worry about bus schedules and all that. They'd both hugged him and told him they were already very proud of him, and Terence, who'd never heard a kind word before Belladonna entered his life, was overwhelmed enough to seek out the quiet of his room, the Wizard Watcher as ever at his side.

The Wizard Watcher was happy to be of service to Terence (and glad that wizards shed no tears and his chest remained free of mucus), but was also pleased that he had three heads so he could continue to multitask even as he rocked Terence soothingly, shuffling his bulk from side to side in the manner of teenaged boys attempting to slow dance. For what was happening below was very interesting indeed.

Mark announced that he would wait at the car while Susan said she wanted to use the loo before making the journey home. The Wizard Watcher's Middle Head focused its attention on the darkest wizard in history, nestled against his chest, while the Right Head tracked Belladonna and Susan and the Left Head took in the conversation between Lester and Mark.

Lester was leaning on the bonnet of the red Cortina, just next to Mark, who was doing the same. "I was hoping to have a word," Lester said. "About the family."

"Of course," said Mark, who already had a suspicion about where this was going. "Do you mean Belladonna is in the family way?" There had been quite a lot of chatter about babies over lunch, and he'd been confused, thinking at first that Belladonna was referring to Terence, and only later realised that Terence was not related by blood to any of them. Actually, none of them was related to any other member of the family, which Mark found rather touching.

Lester let out an alarmingly loud snort at the query. "Oh, mate, you don't even know. He only planned to marry to have a baby, a proper heir for the blackest wizard in England, but then he fell in love with Belladonna, the whitest witch anyone can remember. They were actually going to give marriage a miss in case her whiteness was passed on, but then Terence turned up, black as you like, so there was no pressure to have a certain kind of baby."

"That's good," Mark said, trying to follow.

Lester was warming up to his task and was making quite a meal of his speech; he hadn't enjoyed himself so much since he'd last worked the fairgrounds. "Only they're not gonna have any baby, black, white, or plaid, if they don't know how to make one." Lester slid his eye sideways and saw Mark gaping incredulously at him. "There's been no, ah, consummation. The pair of them don't seem to know they're missing out on anything. They think kissing is the limit." He knocked Mark's shoulder gently with his own. "That boy of yours is shy as anything, even with his own wife. Even when he's got an example right in front of him — that Jean only showed up a few days ago, but he and Noah took one look at each other and started going at it hammer and tongs; the sounds I have heard coming out of that bedroom are enough to make a sailor blush."

Mark opened and closed his mouth a few times, scrambling to get his thoughts together. "He was always a little shy around women — wouldn't look any of Susan's friends in the eye — and he set out on his own when he was only just sixteen."

Lester nodded. "And the Todcaster witches — Belladonna apart — were no prizes. He was that shook when he saw them for the first time."

"Belladonna is so lovely, and they seem so in love —"

"They are," Lester assured him. "Once he met Belladonna, he was able to see right through that nasty enchantress who'd set 'er cap at him. That's one of the clearest signs of true love."

"So — that's it? No carnal instinct?" Mark was frankly bewildered. He and Susan had barely been able to keep their hands off each other since they first met. He still, forty years on, found her enchanting.

"You need to have _the talk_ with him." Mark froze in horror. "Diagrams might help," Lester said, and he wasn't wrong.

Meanwhile, Arriman was dealing with George, who was blowing through his post-lunch nap and was on a sugar high that boded ill for everyone at Darkington, and Susan and Belladonna were having a conversation of their own. 

"Is married life all that you imagined?" Susan asked, smiling at the array of photographs arranged on the wall, the largest of which was Terence's contribution: a portrait of Belladonna and Arriman on their wedding day, as close to drowning in each other's eyes as it was possible to get. Susan peered closely at it, finally making out that the dark shape in Belladonna's hair was a vampire bat and not a snood, and marvelling at her son's antlers and — good Lord! — gold lamé trousers. Belladonna _had_ to be in love if she was willing to marry Arriman when he was dressed like that.

"Oh yes," Belladonna said, smiling the smile of the content. "He writes poems for me all the time, and he's ever so clever and loving. He kisses me for hours on end. He never holds my whiteness against me. He's the handsomest man in the world and looks just as good in his constellation cloak as in his yellow silk pajamas. And when we're in bed together at the end of another day, I stroke his mustache and massage his ankles." Belladonna breathed out a happy breath, her eyes dreamy.

Susan kept a straight face through the whole litany, which she found adorable but alarming. "Oh!" she said when she saw the next room in the corridor; it was the one where Belladonna's flowers had taken over one wall and were steadily conquering the next. A note, which appeared to have been written with a cinder, lay smoking gently next to the splendid cluster of roses, thorns as beautiful as the petals; it simply said _you are the sun / you are the rain_. Belladonna nearly swooned with delight at the horticultural compliment and the love that fashioned it, and Susan saw that perhaps she might need to give her motherless daughter-in-law _the talk_.

*

Mark and Susan were as bad at keeping their opinions to themselves as they were at keeping their hands off each other. "He's thirty-four years old!" Mark expostulated, swerving to pass a Morris Minor.

"Lionel. Bleeding. Richie," Susan said.

"We're going to have to give them _the talk_ ," they said together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Susan said: [Lionel. Bleeding. Richie.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXMDWfLclNY)


	5. CHAPTER FOUR

Arriman had a hunch his wife had got the same talk he had — though perhaps his mum had omitted the diagrams — and bemoaned the fact that she still had not made the first move. He could easily do steps two and three if she would just get things started, sort of give him a running start. She was the cleverest woman in the world, after all, and she ought to be able to get the consummation train rolling.

He simply couldn't make the first move. All he could think about was Sir Simon — imagine having to do . . . that . . . seven times! How had he ever looked any of his wives in the eye again? 

Belladonna, meanwhile, was equally dismayed by what she was assured was supposed to go on in the marital bed. None of what Susan had described sounded the least bit natural, and surely if Arriman, Wizard of the North, could create the Wizard Watcher, he could create a baby. Wizards and witches likely didn't have sex to procreate; it was impossible to picture any of the Todcaster coven or Madame Olympia as delightful chubby little babies. But Susan wouldn't have lied to her, and Belladonna sighed again, hoping against hope that her husband would take that first decisive step.

*

Oddly enough, Belladonna and Arriman came to the realisation of just what Noah and Jean were always disappearing into their bedroom to do at precisely the same moment. Jean held a raspberry up to Noah's smiling lips, said " _framboise_ " and repeated Noah's translation, "raspberry," before popping the berry into his lover's waiting mouth. Arriman's olive cheeks went scarlet and Belladonna hid her face in her masses of hair, while around them the lesson continued, Terence ate his way steadily through two omelettes, and Lester and the Wizard Watcher debated whether swords of Damascus steel would be easier or more difficult to swallow than local varieties, and whether the Wizard Watcher's stand-up comedy routine would go over well with fairground crowds.

Arriman and Belladonna stood at the same time and, before anyone could ask what was wrong, disappeared in a puff of smoke.

When the smoke cleared, Belladonna saw that Arriman had transported them to the dark heart of his yew-tree maze. "Well," Arriman said, less in misery than in disbelief, "they seem happy enough to do it all the bloody time."

"Yes," Belladonna agreed. "Repeatedly, and with great enthusiasm." She had gone to get herself one of Jean's pains au chocolat as a snack one early morning and heard their exalted voices.

"Leadbetter was always sane enough before Jean came along," Arriman said. "Still is, though he's particularly heavy with the red pen." Arriman was not yet inured to having his manuscript edited so judiciously.

"He's so happy," Belladonna said. "I suppose we . . . might try it for ourselves? Just once?"

They turned to each other. His eyes softened as they swept over every beloved inch of her, from her crown of curls to her little pink toes peeping out of her sensible sandals. Her eyes widened expressively as she took in his tufty ears, the great hook of his nose, the breadth of his chest, and the length of his legs. Still they only looked: admiring, loving, but not touching.

A shaft of sunlight penetrated the arcade over the dark heart of the maze, and Cernunnos used it to paint them both: Belladonna was enveloped in the golden cloud of her hair and Arriman stood particularly lofty and marvellous in the light. Her heart began to race, his vision narrowed to only her, and they reached for each other with hands that could wait no more, mouths that wanted only to meet.

"Arry!" cried Belladonna. "Beloved," gasped Arriman hoarsely. They fell to their knees, sank down to stretch full-length on the welcoming ground. Her hand got lost in his hair, his fingers traced a line down the centre of her body. Begonias began to bloom around them, and Lester, who'd been alarmed by their disappearance, turned resolutely around and headed back to the house when he saw the blossoms settling on yew branches like small crowns.

Inside the maze, Belladonna and Arriman were discovering still more than they ever suspected there was to know.


	6. EPILOGUE

George insisted that he and he alone would be cooking breakfast from then on, delighting in sending Lester out for the most obscure ingredients he could think of. Lester, never one to miss a trick, often swung by the fairgrounds on his way to the shops, talking shop and keeping a sharp eye on the ticket sales. He also discussed with Rover the necessity of aerating the garden in order to grow some of the vegetables that George demanded that were too difficult to procure from the Todcaster shops. Jean began devoting much of his free time to baking, with the bonus of getting to feed his darling Noah pastries by hand as Mr. Leadbetter the Secretary struck the purplest passages in Arriman's manuscript with a ruthless pen.

Terence visited with Mark and Susan twice a week and took great pleasure in transporting them instantly to Darkington Hall when it was his turn to host. After consulting with Susan, he devised a bed/hammock hybrid that could accommodate the Wizard Watcher's unique physique, and the Wizard Watcher discovered that he was actually not a morning monster at all. He lolled around in his new bed for hours at a time and worked out which jokes to keep and which to cut from his stand-up routine. Mark was a valuable testing ground as he put together five solid minutes of comedy.

As for the master and mistress of Darkington, some things changed, but most did not. It cost Arriman a pang to think of having his smashing pajamas folded neatly away, but Belladonna the Beloved was too empathetic to do that; what, she asked, was stopping the Great Wizard of the North from also being a fashion iconoclast, someone who wore pajamas during the day instead of in bed? That suited Arriman just fine, as he enjoyed the nightly sensation of Belladonna's fingers stroking tenderly through his curse curl (now with more than a few white hairs) before drifting down his bared body too much to worry about what he'd wear in the morning.


End file.
